Showing papers by "Ralf Michaels published in 2019"

Private International Law and the Question of Universal Values

Abstract: Private international law presumes, and responds to, plurality—of laws, and of values. How does it then respond to ideas about universal values? In fact, the question involves three tensions—between formalism and values, between private international law and substantive law, and between plurality and universality. Private international law cannot isolate itself from questions of value, but how should it account for them? Attempts to explicitly take on conflicts of laws as conflicts of substantive values, as for example in the better law theory, have intrinsic weaknesses. Attempts to resolve such conflicts in the name of universal conflicts values are more promising. But existing conflicts values are in conflict among themselves, and there is no set of meta-values that can resolve these conflicts. Ultimately, the chapter suggests two universal values that are specific to conflict of laws: responsivity, and technicality.

Private International Law as an Ethic of Responsivity

Abstract: The world is a mess. Populism, xenophobia, and islamophobia; misogyny and racism; the closing of borders against the neediest—the existential crisis of modernity calls for a firm response from ethics. Why, instead of engaging with these problems through traditional ethics, worry about private international law, that most technical of technical fields of law? My claim in this chapter: not despite, because of its technical character. Private international law provides such an ethic, an ethic of responsivity. It provides us with a technique of ethics, a technique that helps us conceptualise and address some of the most pressing issues of our time. It is not only ethically relevant, it is itself an ethic. Let me explain.